Parenting 'Boomerang' Children

In today's tough economy, adult children just out of college and even those out for many years may be struggling to maintain independence and need to return home. When the rules of engagement change, these tips can help.

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With the unemployment rate in the United States still hovering close to 10 percent, millions of people are unable to find work. In this challenging economy, with fewer jobs available for recent college grads, more and more young adults have been forced to move back home and are living with parents until they can manage on their own.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, as many as 13 percent of parents had an adult child move back home within the past year. These "boomerang" children are becoming more common and putting a whole new spin on parenting.

"They can't make it on their own, and they need to come back home," says Grattan Giesey, MSSA, a licensed social worker in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. "They're often coming back with psychological baggage in that they have tried to be independent and haven't succeeded at it. So they come home with their tails between their legs, and that can be difficult because they tend to be defensive."

It's important for adult children living with parents to recognize and understand that they are intruding into their parents' lives to a certain extent, disrupting the daily routines that parents have established since they moved away, but that doesn't negate the parents’ love and willingness to care for their adult children, says Giesey.

Boomerang Children: Parenting When Kids Come Home

While each situation is unique, keep these points in mind when your adult children move back in:

Be clear and consistent with what you want and expect.

Think of your adult child as a roommate. Grown children are adults and, though they are living with parents, the situation is more like roommates than parent and child.

Make more requests of your children and fewer demands — say “I would like for you to contribute toward rent and groceries” or “Can you help clean the house?” rather than demanding that they do those things in order to live there.

Encourage them to make some contribution that is reasonable for them, be it financial or helping out.

Don't take on too many responsibilities for them. Encourage them to become independent even when living with you.

Try not to make any ultimatums. If you do make a rule or an ultimatum, make sure that you follow through.

Don't set rules as you would for an adolescent.

Boomerang Children: What It’s Like for Them

Christina Newberry, 32, of Vancouver, BC, Canada, founder of www.AdultChildrenLivingatHome.com and author of an eBook for parents dealing with the return of grown children, had to move back in with her parents twice. The first time, the reason was financial. She had just graduated from college and was getting on her feet. After about eight months, she moved out on her own.

Seven years later, she ended a relationship and needed some time to collect herself and find a new place to live. So she moved in with mom and dad again at age 29. She and her parents came up with a system that worked for them, so that they weren't infringing on each other too much and weren't too inconvenienced either.

"My parents didn't have a lot of rules, but they did have some,” says Newberry. "I was not allowed to get phone calls at the house phone after 9 p.m., since my parents went to bed early." She easily addressed this by getting a cell phone. She also had to let her parents know if she was going to be home late, mostly out of courtesy because they worried about her.

Newberry was responsible for her own laundry and cleaning her room — just as she had been before she went to college. And she had to cook dinner once a week. The requests didn't seem unreasonable to Newberry. "I felt fine about the rules, since they were really more guidelines for being a decent houseguest, which really is what I was," she says.

"My biggest and most important advice,” offers Newberry, “is to really talk about your expectations and come to an agreement about the rules before the adult child moves home, or as soon as possible after they move home."

Open and thoughtful communication will go a long way toward avoiding what could otherwise be a stressful living situation.

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